Ex-Steam boss Jason Holtman joins Oculus VR as head of platform

Jason Holtman, who previously headed up Steam as director of business development at Valve and more recently worked at Microsoft, is Oculus VR’s latest big hire. Holtman’s taking on the mantle of head of platform.

Holtman will be leading the business development and partnership side of Oculus VR, working alongside the engineering and publishing sides.

“I’m humbled to become a part of this team. I’m not one of the pioneering scientists or engineers in virtual reality,” said Holtman. [“B]ut I am one of the people that can’t stop grinning every time I see something new inside the headset, and I'm looking forward to helping shape the transformative experiences that inspire the next generation of developers.”

Holtman left Steam last year, and until February was working at Microsoft to make Windows a better platform for PC. With the failure of GfWL, he may have been keen to get out, and was only with the company for around six months.

Since the Facebook deal, Oculus VR have been doing a lot of hiring. The company has listed just some of the acquisitions they’ve made just since March:

Neil Konzen, former engineer at Valve and one of the original Microsoft employees

Brian Hook, former engineer at RAD (Telemetry) and the original author of 3Dfx Glide

Adrian Wong, former lead systems engineer at Google[x] (Glass)

Ian Field, former engineer at ARM and co-inventor of Cortex-M

Raul Corella, former head of supply chain at JawBone, Monster, and Leap Motion

Laura Fryer, former GM of Epic Seattle and WB Seattle

Paul Pedriana, former engineer at EA

David Moore, former engineer at RAD (Granny)

Kenneth Scott, former art director at 343 Studios (Halo 4)

Seneca Menard, former technical artist at id Software

Paul Pepera, former environment artist at Valve and 343 Studios

Brian Sharp, former engineer at Bungie

Aaron Nicholls, former engineer at Valve, 343 Studios, and Microsoft

Matt Alderman, former engineer at Valve and ArenaNet

Cass Everitt, former GPU architect and engineer at Nvidia

Ross O’Dwyer, former at head of development support at Havok

Douglas Lanman, former research scientist at Nvidia Research and MIT Media Lab